It was around 9 pm at the Beach and Boardwalk World; or I suppose that's where I was, given that I
took the wrong turn, after having been intrigued by a shop with the same Dooney &Burke retro-Disney designed messenger bag I had purchase a few weeks
earlier at disneystore.com.
Was the amount I paid online the same as in the store? I was
gratified to see that the pricing was consistent. I contemplated purchasing a few bags of the
same design, but then thought better of it. I’m not necessarily a hoarder, but
I do seem to have a difficult time letting go of vintage bags and designer
items. In theory, I could sell them on eBay, but it’s tedious and frustrating
to do so. Perhaps if I had an assistant who would deal with all the mechanics
of it, I’d feel comfortable, but as it is, I just feel a sense of dread.
Walt Disney World opened in 1971. The retro views and art
evoke the late 60s and early 70s fascination with the Space Age, and an
affirmation of values that differentiated us from our Cold War obverses.
Instead of Mao suits and a “Great Leap Forward” we embraced fairy tales and
frontier homilies that suggested that if you ground yourself in early American
values, your fate would be a certitude of prosperity, joyous family relations,
and above all, a validation of imagination and creative reach.
These were some of the thoughts I contemplated, so it was
not too surprising that I took the wrong turn. With a start, I realized I
missed the bus back to the Contemporary Resort, where I was staying, and the
Boardwalk was many worlds away.
But, perhaps I had willed it this way. Walt Disney World
offered me various options; I chose a combination of boat and bus.
The weather was glorious and cool, and standing at the back
of the boat, breathing the humid air, the smell of swamp, I looked at the
American flag flapping at the back. My uncle in Lake Placid has a boathouse filled
with vintage mahogany Chris-Craft “cigar boats” he restored by hand.
A surgeon by profession, he also had a talent for
surgicating wood, and so had, in addition to his meticulously restored wooden
boats, an entire Adirondack “Camp” (a 14-bedroom lake house), outfitted in
faux-Stickley and other Craftsman-vintage furniture. He told me the key was in
the fittings. They needed to be authentic. I had questions, but he did not like
to listen to or answer my questions. He preferred the role of seed-sower and
scatterer of wisdom. It was my job to harrow my heart and mind so that these
seeds would sprout and not be carried off by an adventitious bird.
He took me for a spin in one of his boats. He mentioned that
it was leaking, but not to worry, he had a good bilge pump (although it was on
the fritz at the moment). As we slowly settled deeper in the water, and the
shoreline receded, he regaled me with “fun facts” about Lake Placid. It was the
deepest lake in the Adirondacks, and the coldest. Did it have a creature as did
Lake Champlain? A lake monster of sorts?
The sound of the engine drowned out my words, which were not projected with any
sort of confidence, so it was less than surprising that they sank somewhere in
the depths.
As we tooled, lower and lower in the water, across Lake
Placid, he pointed out the Gilded Age “Camps” – some no longer extant having
been burned to the ground by reluctant heirs who found, to their dismay, that
the Township of Lake Placid relied exclusively on property tax for the
maintenance of their schools, fire department, police, water and sewage, road
salt – in short, everything.
I would have preferred to see someone turn a “Camp” into a
church of sorts, and use it for a renewal of the utopian experiments that so
characterized upstate New York during the 19th century. A “New
Oneida” anyone?
But, no one was listening to me, and, the grand utopian
experiment that was Walt Disney World, was, at least in terms of physical
security, much more benign, although there are those who would argue that
ideologically, it was not so. I like utopias, and don’t much care for
dystopias, so it probably is more likely that a “better world” is more feasible
in central Florida, the 1980 Lake Place Olympic Games notwithstanding.
I had no idea of the name of the central Florida lake, and
wondered how many alligators the park might hold, and if / when any escaped
Burmese Pythons made their way here, and if they found it to be the pristine
Edenic habitat that they found the Everglades to be. I would think that unless
they could subsist on dreams and air, there would not be much to forage for.
There was precious little trash, and it was hard to find stray pets or unattended
toddlers.
We docked at Hollywood Studios, and so I made my way to the
bus destined for the Contemporary Resort. I was impressed to be surrounded by
impeccably groomed and comported young children, who either slept noiselessly
or quietly conversed with siblings, discussing math facts and maps. One
6-year-old girl waxed eloquent about addition to her younger brother, who
clutched a box containing Star Wars action figures. They seemed so beatifically
calm that I wondered if they piped in some sort of happy gas, or did they put
it in the water? I would consider living here if this is truly how people
behave.